a reply to:
JiggyPotamus
Thanks for the response
In the first paragraph it seems that you are basically stating that blacks have good reason to resent whites, or at the very least that blacks are
biologically forced to resent whites. Then in a later sentence you denounce racism. If we can first establish that resentment of an entire race of
people is racist, which it definitely is considering it is race-based, then it can be argued that the resentment blacks feel for whites is racist.
This begs the question, "is this form of racism acceptable, seeing as how it could be psychologically/biologically driven?"
I'm not sure you how I led you to that conclusion. The dynamics of the matter emerge like this; I'm going to describe sequentially, beginning firstly
with the originating fact: in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, white Europeans operating through corporations, bought black slaves in Africa, sold
them to sugar plantation owners in America. Implied in this whole dynamic - obviously to our 21st century clear-minded hindsight - was a cruel
master-slave orientation, where one group experienced themselves daily as "superior" and the other group experienced themselves as worthy of the
hatred. This is basically a psychological fact: this is what happens; this is what psychoanalysis discovers again and again in therapy.
Now magnify that dynamic and imagine it as operating in the larger black culture. Just as whites ignore the obvious immorality of their practices
(slave owning; dehumanizing other human beings who obviously present themselves as just like you, mentally and emotionally) and consciously
experience, or tell themselves, a more pleasant story (we have a right to own you!), blacks do the same but the opposite. They dissociate away from
consciousness the humility of being treated that way; and tacitly or explicitly resent whites in subtle and probably common ways.
So this is the story from the 1700s and 1800s America. The whole dynamic was screwed. Some people, white people, pretended to be 'more human' than
another group of people. There was something deeply narcissistic with this positions: a disavowal of ones own inherent vulnerability in life and with
other people. This is what a patriarchal 'honor-bound' society does. They drown out actual experiences they have (and thus via projection into the
other person come to experience themselves as "right" in all that they do; particularly with others who've been unconsciously put into the "them"
group) and entertain self-narratives of being better or stronger than someone else. This sort of dynamic is normal in pathological societies.
Now, the year is 2014. When slavery ended in the late 1800's, as said, institutional strictures were 'removed', in the sense that one was now a
citizen, but other, determinant and 'canalizing' factors, which basically bring one into society and make one a full member, these parts were still
closed off to blacks. The businesses that existed within the existent market didn't see to it - and didn't see the necessity for, an active project to
get freed slaves into secure jobs and living.
What I'm actually talking about here is fundamental LAW. It is unreasonable, of course, to expect something to happen which has a low probability of
happening. This is one of the popular definitions of insanity. When blacks were released from slavery their cultural and psychological shackles - what
today we would call their 'basin of attraction' in the language of complexity theory - were still very firmly on them. This is an indisputable
scientific fact, based upon a great deal of research into the topological dynamics of socializing within a culture. Just think of it like this: if you
grow up and as you grow up your brain takes in the 'language' of your environment, your very sense of self (the cortex) is deeply rooted with the
environment it experiences (subcortically and autonomically). This means other people become AS YOU. For blacks who grew up in each generation since
slavery, they have been stuck in a very negative basin of attraction - a state of 'flow' or emotional and psychological dynamics that rigidifies them
towards certain type of behavior.
On the other hand, we, descendents of white America, or, on the other hand, immigrants from other European or Asian countries, experience ourselves
differently because we come from another category. If were white, particularly if were WASP's, we fall within a different basin of attraction. Again,
this is just an 'average'. Every person has their own unique life trajectory, but the existing, entrenched trajectories 'rigidified' as cultural
behaviors (such as what we think or feel about a certain group) tend to bring most of us into their respective group.
As to address your question about 'resentment'. The resentment is like a 'emergent property'. Consider the dynamics; consider that without any
'outside' influence, the dynamics self-amplify themselves. In other words, if someone I know thinks and feels just like me, together, both of us are
going to increase and amplify that effect on others who think like me. This is the basic, frustrating fact of human social-emotions. They tug at us
and draw us into the orbit.
What comes with this awareness, I think and I should also hope, is a sense of compassion and empathy. We all deal with this. Were all stuck and thrown
into positions that have really little to do with our 'free-will' and more to do with us being unconscious to the way emotions and identity mutually
encourage each other. The mind needs belief to stay alive; and so with other minds like it, all minds work upon each other to increase their beliefs.
So as to increase their ability to survive.
Being the case, I do not in the least bit blame blacks for any felt resentment. I think it's warranted and I think, even if it becomes racist itself,
it is more justified for them than it would be for us to imagine that our racism - or lack of response to the dynamics which enslave modern black
minds - is justified. More probably, there's the risk that people wont notice how present dynamics favor whites and how whites and their status in
America is a result of past institutional, relational moral and other complex interactions which mutually enforce one another.
This isn't a simple subject. And this is what makes the just case of blacks so difficult for the other people to understand; particularly if you have
low emotional intelligence - that is, can understand how emotions restrict us and cause us to act in morbid ways by throwing thought and cognition
into deranged categories. The emotions work deep within us and the mind has all sorts of stories to justify itself.
That's basically how we work before we become aware of it and try to minimize its tyranny in our minds and in our relations with others.
BTW, my earlier use of the 'word' topological is to give us a 'birds eye view', in the sense of analyzing history in light of trends and 'basins of
attraction' - how a master-slave relationship between differing people force one group far in this direction --> and another group in that direction